The Barbarian and the Bard
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Tristram had fallen long before the current age. Before the coming of the Angel of Death, of the horrors he'd unleashed, and the fifty years of bloodshed that had followed. Yet in his quest to find the Daughter of Hatred, he had come here. And in the world's last days, it appeared that he was not the only one to have done so.


**The Barbarian and the Bard**

The village had once been called Tristram.

In a sense, it still retained the namesake. That, or "Old Tristram," to distinguish it from the treading post that had grown into a village, and "New Tristram" later on. Of course, it mattered little these days, as both villages lay in ruins, the only difference being that one had suffered the passage of time longer than the other. Either way though, he was here. The people who had called Tristram home weren't. Their bodies had long since fed the ground, and his souls, he so hoped, had found a place beyond Sanctuary. A place that had to be better than the world as it was now. A world that, he'd come to accept, would be this way forevermore. Once one descended into Hell, one didn't get to climb out. But to climb the stairs to Heaven was to risk a fall.

He didn't know who said that. Likely some sage or philosopher who was long since dead, who'd had the privilege of dying in his bed. The type of person who could have called Khanduras or Westmarch home, before those kingdoms fell into ruin. Before the world turned the page, and found that quills were no longer of any use. Though for his people, the Children of Bul-Kathos, they'd never needed quills. The only writing they'd needed was runes, and their history had been passed down in verse. A history that was on the brink of being lost as so few shamans and storytellers lived long enough to recite it.

He tried to tell himself that he didn't care. The Sacred Mountain had been destroyed long before he was born. Before his father even, and when his father's father was but an infant screaming as ash fell down around him. Mount Arreat was gone, and life would never return to the Dreadlands. All that was left for him to do was travel east. To find Hatred's Daughter and put an axe to her head before she took the last embers of hope within this world and cast them into the abyss she'd been banished to. Which meant heading south, then east, finding a ship at Lut Gholein, and sailing the Twin Seas to Kehjistan, before arriving in Scosglen, killing anything that got in his way. Simple plan, easy to remember. But still…

It was twilight. Twilight complicated things, because he still had enough light to see, but also enough experience to know that he should take shelter. Men might look up to the sun in hope, but the night was the domain of the dead and demons. Not even the full moon could provide enough light to keep the darkness at bay. Ergo, he needed shelter. And by fate or circumstance, Tristram could provide it. Or at least its cathedral might, which was the only structure left standing. So, casting a glance behind him, searching and sniffing for any creature that might have tracked him over these empty lands, he tightened his grip on his axe and headed for the cathedral. Once constructed by an order of mages who had bound the Prime Evils in spiritual prisons, now a monument to their failure. Likewise appropriated by a man who had worshipped the Light, before falling into degeneracy that would give even the most heinous of tyrants pause.

He wrinkled his nose as he made his way through the village. There was no sign of any bodies, their corpses long since picked clean by the crows, and their bones were now dust. The smell of death was on the air though – a smell that he knew all too well. It was the smell of ash. It was the smell of rotting meat. It was the smell that told the one with the nose that there was something fundamentally wrong with the world. It had been the smell he'd lived with all his life in the Dreadlands, and it had followed him into Khanduras. Or, he supposed, perhaps the smell was already here. Seven days had he travelled across field, moor, and forest, and he had not beheld a single living soul…though not for lack of bodies. He'd have thought that Khanduras losing its king decades before the coming of the Fallen Angel might have prepared its people for the hardships to come, but apparently not. They were dead, or in hiding. Likely waiting for the knife to find their throat. He-

_Wait._

He tightened the grip on his axe as he reached the cathedral's entrance. Someone was already here. A fire, too dim to be seen from outside, but here, at the entrance, on the boundary between light and dark…he could see it. Fire meant warmth. Warmth meant comfort. Warmth also meant that Hell was reaching towards you, and if you stared at the embers too long, demons would take you in your sleep. Stepping into the cathedral, he hoped for the best, and prepared for the worst. He'd been in the proximity of fire in this land already. The type that was thrown at him before he sunk his axe into the demon's skull.

"Company," a voice whispered. "I didn't expect that."

The voice was feminine and weary, carrying with it a sense of age that few could muster, by virtue of few living long enough to do so.

"Well, come on then. Friend or foe, I've not long for this world either way. Might as well enjoy some company."

He walked through the cathedral. Perhaps it was a woman. Perhaps it was a demon. Perhaps it was a ghost that had been unable to move on after the horrors that had occurred here. Despite the discipline that had been ingrained into him since his birth, he nevertheless let his gaze wander around the cathedral. Shattered pews with rotting wood. Stone walls that could not hide their age. Stain-glass windows, all but one of which had been shattered. And at the far end, a stone lectern that remained standing. As if waiting for a holy man to find it and speak lies, assuring the world that the Light would prevail. He knew he was no such man. And coming to the embers of the fire, and the one who was sitting by it, he knew that the woman was no such person either. A liar would have tried to appear more fair.

She looked up at him and gave him a smile. "Well?" she asked. "Sitting or standing?"

He said nothing. Her smile was marred by missing teeth, broken teeth, and yellow teeth. More than what he was used to.

"Are you deaf?" she asked.

After a moment, he sat down on the cold stone ground, laying his axe across his legs. The woman looked at it in bemusement.

"One of those things," she said, looking at the weapon. She looked up at him. "Do you swing, or do you bring it down from above?" She made a chopping motion with her hand.

He grunted, looking at the bone that he could see under the woman's saggy flesh. "I do what's needed."

The smile faded, and she looked back at the fire. "Don't we all?" she whispered.

Still sitting, he looked around. No signs of an ambush, be they demon, the walking dead, or even bandits. His heart told him that it was unlikely to be a trap. His head told him that there was something wrong. In this land, in this age, a woman, or even a man, surviving to this age, out here, in the wild? That suggested either great luck, or something darker.

"What's your name?" the woman asked.

Seeing no reason to lie, he answered, "Harken."

"Harken." She pursed her lips. "Harken. A good name that." She pulled a bag out of her shawl and sprinkled some powder over the fire. Instantly, it grew in heat and brightness.

Harken frowned. "Are you a witch?" he asked.

She snorted. "I use some powder, and you instantly think magic?"

"This village is Tristram. Its known for many things, one of which is a witch who nearly doomed the world."

"And?" the woman asked, staring at the fire. "What of it? The world is doomed regardless." She laid her hands in her lap, both of them as saggy and creased as what little Harken could see of her face. "Adria," she whispered. "Always the crafty one."

Harken frowned. "You speak of the witch as if you knew her."

"Knew her? No. I doubt anyone really _knew _Adria. But I knew of her. Bartered with her. Kept saying I was searching for answers."

Harken laughed. "You make a very poor liar."

The woman glared at him. "Liar, am I?"

"Tristram fell over seventy years ago. You would have had to have been a child."

"Or older," the woman whispered.

Harken studied her. He wasn't good at spotting liars. Liars weren't needed in his tribe. Liars were people who kept meat to themselves or tried to cheat in games. Liars ended up dead or banished. Liars, ergo, were rare. Question was, had he found a liar? Or one that was mad?

"How old are you?" he murmured.

He could play the hag's game and try and find out which she was.

"Nine and…" She trailed off, looking away. In a whisper, she said, "you know, I don't even know anymore."

Harken grunted. "Of course you don't."

"Over nine decades I've walked this world though. When I was here, I was in my early twenties." She looked back at him. "You should have seen me, Harken. You should have seen all three of us."

"You," Harken said dumbly. "Over ninety years old." He got to his feet, unwilling to suffer the liar's presence any longer. "Spare me. To reach even half that age is rare."

"Rare, but not impossible," she said. "Especially when one has certain skills."

"Skills that allowed you to cheat death this long."

"Skills," she whispered. "And luck."

"Evidently much of both," he said.

The woman looked back at the fire. "Three of us," she whispered. "All of whom descended into the cold depths of the earth."

Harken frowned. "You speak as if you were of the three who confronted the Lord of Terror."

The woman kept talking, as if she hadn't heard him. "Three to find the one. Na'Krul. Summoned to this world by a madman. One of them a Brother of the Bough. The other, a man of the south, with weapons scarce different from your own. And one, a girl, a Seeker of the Light, who'd brought both sword and harp to this forsaken village."

Harken stared at her. Brother of the Bough? Na'Krul? These were terms unfamiliar to him. The latter sounded like the name of a demon, but if so, what of it? There were more demons who had plagued this world than there were stars in the sky. But in Tristram, only one demon of note was remembered. And it was one that remained enough for any who dared speak its name.

"The demon was defeated," the woman continued. "And we so heard that the Lord of Terror had likewise been felled by three. The third Prime Evil, bested by the number by which he and his brothers were counted. And we thought…" She looked at Harken, and he saw a tear drop from her right eye. Carrying dust and grime with it as it made its way down her wrinkled skin.

"What did we accomplish, Northman?" she whispered. "What did we do? The village still burnt. A wanderer headed into the east. Your mountain still fell. Twenty years of false hope given to us, before the beginning of fifty years of horror." She reached out with a speed that belied her age, grabbing Harken's hand. "This is the world Diablo would have wanted," she whispered. "Do you understand? He won. In spite of being thrice felled, he _won_." She looked up at the stained glass window that Harken had seen earlier. "And Heaven, as always, remains beyond sky and sight. The world has gone to Hell, and Hell is not to be saved. Only spurned, or destroyed."

He looked at the window and frowned. Displayed on it was an angel with golden armour and wing, plunging his spear into masses of demons below. It was glorious. It was beautiful. It was false. Whatever angels may or may not have done to demons, they had done nothing over the last half century. Indeed, apart from the one named Tyrael, the stories said that they had done nothing at all. Some doubted whether angels even existed, and for much of the time, Harken counted himself among them. Demons were real. Demons ran rampant across the world. It seemed that tales of angels, of gold and silver warriors descending from on high to bring salvation to the world…they were just that. Tales. An attempt to bring hope to those in a world without any other sources of it.

The woman let go of his hand, using hers to wipe more tears from her eyes. Harken, to his shame, felt a stab of pity for her. He'd seen women cry. He'd seen men cry, though they did their best to hide it. When tears were shed among his people, it was over grief far more immediate than this. But if what she said was true, if she had indeed faced a demon here over seventy years ago, then he had no doubt that she carried scars, and not just on her body. And to have walked this world for seventy years beyond that…

"You know I don't even remember their names," she whispered. She looked at Harken. "In my mind's eye, they're as real to me as you are now. But their namesakes, I can't recall. Light, I remember the demon we felled, but not the ones who did it!"

Harken, after a moment, asked, "and your name? Do you remember that?"

The woman bit her lip. "Leliana," she said. "Lily, as people long dead once called me."

Harken's own lips tightened at the use of the name. Lily. Different. But similar.

"Of course," the woman whispered, "Lily is not a name I used much these days. Not with all the whispers coming from the east. Of Hatred's Daughter, returned to claim her progeny. Of she whose name is Lilith."

Harken frowned. "How did you hear about that?"

She gave a bitter laugh. "The wind blows, and carries whispers. Also ships. People fleeing from across the Twin Seas, who have braved even the deserts of Aranoch to find what sanctuary they can in this fallen kingdom. They've seen the signs. They've heard the rumours. Some have even seen her cultists – madmen who are all too eager to do the bidding of their mother." She gave him a hard look. "How you, Northman? How hear you of the Mother of Sanctuary?"

"Shamans," he answered simply. "Whispers can reach into dreams."

"And, what?" the woman asked. "You came here to put one of those axes of yours into her skull?"

Harken glared at her as she laughed. "Is that strange?" he asked. "I've faced demons since the day I could walk. If she dies, Sanctuary is rid of a great evil. If I die, I do so in the knowledge that there could be no finer death."

The woman's glare matched his own. "Have you walked the paths of Hell, Harken?" she whispered. "Have you been in a place where the barrier between worlds is as thin as the flesh that binds my bones?"

He said nothing, unable to concede that he hadn't.

"Speak not lightly of facing Mephisto's daughter, Northman. The tales say she's an evil as old as the world itself, whose cunning eclipses even that of her father. But…" She looked aside. Staring at the wall with an intensity that Harken hadn't seen from her.

"Leliana?" he asked. She answered not, so he gently took her arm in his hand. "Lily?"

"Travel east," she whispered.

"Pardon?"

"East," the woman whispered, still not meeting his gaze. "Travel east, and tread the path of one before you, as followed by five. Seek refuge at Eastgate Keep, for it is the only safe bastion left in these lands. Talk, drink, find what merriment you can before braving the desert and taking a ship across the sea. Behold the water, and remember that all the water in the sea below you cannot make this world clean. Then, if death and glory is what you seek, travel north. To Scosglen. Find your people's cousins there…and whoever else has been drawn to Lilith's flame."

She looked back at Harken. Her eyes were brown and bloodshot. Eyes which blinked, as she looked down, as if emerging from a trance.

"I would have given that in song once," she whispered. "But…"

"But?"

"Whispers on the wind," she repeated. She tapped her head. "And whispers here, in this cathedral. So close to the resting places of two demon lords. Even if only one of them is remembered."

She was jealous, Harken reflected. If she spoke truly, he couldn't blame her. And in spite of everything, he didn't doubt her either. Perhaps it was his heart overruling his head. But he'd seen people like her before. Those who had given into despair and madness. Despair, she had made her home. But she wasn't mad. He knew that much.

"You may stay the night here," Leliana said. "I would recommend it. The nights are long, and full of terrors." She lay down by the fire, resting her head on her arms. Ready to sleep on the cold ground, as if it were a bed.

"Leliana," Harken said.

She said nothing.

"Lily," he repeated. She opened one eye, peering out through the gloom. "Why did you come here?" he asked.

She gave a soft laugh, which led to a slightly louder cough. "To die," she said.

"What?"

She lifted up part of her shawl, revealing her chest. The fire illuminated the teeth marks that had scarred her flesh. And around them, the rotting flesh itself. Like those who had suffered frostbite in his homelands.

"Over ninety years I've walked this world," the bard continued. She ran a hand over the wound. "Then one demon messes it up for me. Tears through my flesh, and whose poison enters my body."

Harken frowned. "There is no cure?"

"None that the Sisterhood could provide." She lowered the shawl. "Hence, I returned here, Northman. To this place, supposedly close to the Light, where Akarat will take me to the hereafter if my sins are light enough." She spat, the spit laced with blood, before looking at Harken. "Mourn me not, Northman. My family's gone, my order is gone, and those who were as close as brothers to me have likely departed this world long since. Either way, whatever comes after…it has to be better than this place."

Harken didn't know if she was referring to the cathedral, or the world to which it belonged. Maybe both. Whatever the case, he remained in silent as Leliana closed her eyes once again.

"Sleep well, Northman. May your dreams be free of nightmares."

Harken lay down on the cold ground as well. The fire was beginning to dim, yet the shadows it cast upon the walls were long. He gave one last look at the figure beside him. Her breath low, but her sleep peaceful. Suspecting that she would not wake. That come the morn, he would bury her body before heading east.

A suspicion that was well founded.


End file.
